Joseph-The Well

If it's uh your first time here, we're thrilled that uh you're here.

Hope you can tell that you can just relax and uh be yourself.

Hope you can uh feel that there's a lot of love here.

Because uh wherever God is, uh God is love.

And if you'd like some more information on um what we're about and why, uh you could probably ask just about anybody, but if you're an introvert like me, you might prefer just to grab a brochure that we have in the back and at the info desk and at the kids uh check in.

And I'll tell you a little bit more about uh his hands.

Hope you all had a a good week this last week.

Um I did for the most part.

The highlight, I think, for me was uh listening to uh the message that Justin shared last week.

And um if you if like me you weren't uh here last week, I mean the uh it's so easy to uh to listen to a message of Facebook.

Justin talked about the new His Hands app that uh is free and you can download the website you can listen to a message, uh uh um podcast on iTunes.

But uh it'd be a great one to uh to hear.

I know that for me it was just super um encouraging.

Uh groups and classes got off to a great uh start on Wednesday night, and we just have uh a bunch of awesome leaders and awesome groups, something sincerely for every single age.

We've got child care um for the littler ones, and so uh if you weren't able to jump in last Wednesday, uh free feel free to jump in um anytime.

Thanks for your giving.

You know, I was uh at at work this week, we kind of had the uh some of the stomach flu going around and I got to participate, um, which really it's turned out to be a quick weight loss program.

So it's not it was not a total loss, but uh so I missed uh a couple days here, and what one thing I wanted to do this morning, this is really an apology, one uh I wanted to do was share how much we were able to give together um to the uh Cherokee Family Violence Center and Papa's Pantry and the Hope Center.

But uh I'll have that next Sunday and and uh and let you know um what that was.

So let's uh pray.

Father, I just uh praise you, thank for thank you for being such a great God, for being our Abba Father, our daddy father, and uh loving us so much to that you'd adopt us as your very own children.

So I just praise you for that, Holy Spirit.

Thank you for uh teaching us and counseling us, and I just pray that each of us you'd give us something, uh at least one thing that we can go away and know that it was uh meant especially for us this morning.

And Jesus, you're our Savior, uh King, and our friend, and uh we just praise you and thank you.

It's in your name we pray.

Amen.

So this morning, we're gonna start a new look at one of the greatest uh stories ever.

You know, it's a true story, it's a biography about a real person, a real family.

It has all the elements of a uh of a really great story.

It's kind of a rags to riches type story.

There's passion, there's arrogance, there's jealousy, there's lust, um anger, power, betrayal, forgiveness, joy, grief, love.

Um it's also a story about the nature and the uh character of God and what an adventure of a relationship with God can be and looks like.

This story's been told a lot of different ways.

It's been told in books, it's been told in movies, television, miniseries.

Umnie Osman even played this person in a Broadway musical.

I mean, does it get any bigger than that?

I think not.

It's uh from the book of Genesis, and uh in the book of Genesis, we read a lot of big stories, you know, Moses and and uh Abraham and Isaac, but the most time is dedicated to this story, this person's life.

Um it's a story about outliving our circumstances.

Uh, I believe that's the reason the Holy Spirit inspired uh the account to be kept in such detail for us to see past our past and to see past our current circumstances and see that God loves each of us and he has a plan and he has a purpose and he has more for us if if we will allow him uh to be God and and trust him.

It's also inspiring.

I mean, I think that that's one thing we'll get out of the story is just to be uh inspired, thinking about for the past few weeks, seeing some big mistakes made, but also seeing some tough um choices made.

Uh seeing this person be mistreated in ways that no one really um deserves, but then see how God takes that and makes it work out wonderful uh in his life.

And so it's a story that's uniquely this person's, but it it's really a story that in some ways can be each of our story.

And we need to start with some uh context.

And in fact, most of this morning is gonna be context, which I uh I'd rather get on to the best part of the story.

But we need the context.

It's a little clunky, and in some ways you'll see it's a little bit uh uh negative, but we kind of got to push through it because it's gonna be important to tell um the whole story.

It really starts with his dad.

His dad was a twin.

Um his dad was uh very selfish.

Uh even when he was born, he was fighting to be first, and um and then later he was born second, and his brother would have had the bigger of the birthright, and so he uh kind of plotted this this plan and um stole, if you will, his his brother's birthright.

And his brother really um in a sense traded him, it but it doesn't matter because it wasn't his to give.

His dad is the one that that did that, and so on his dad's deathbed, literally his his dying words, uh he's just deceiving him, tricking him, trying to get something um for himself.

And he he lived kind of a wild life.

Um he was about to get killed for that whole situation, he takes off running.

He ends up uh wrestling with God.

And uh he lost.

I I think God's like two million and oh in wrestling matches.

Um but uh in one sense he lost, in one sense uh he won because it uh changed the uh uh really the trajectory of his life and and what his uh his destiny was going to be.

I mean, for one, he went back and found his brother and apologized and uh who forgave him.

Um he ended up falling madly in love, and uh it it was his turn now for the big deceiver to be the big deceived.

And uh his bride's dad tricked him, and he ended up having to marry the older sister first.

Uh Rachel, his bride, uh could not have children.

But between Leah and some other women, which we'll talk about briefly in a minute, Jacob had uh ten sons.

Now, Jacob, like most, I would say every person that God used was a deeply flawed person.

Even after God got a hold of him, he was still deeply flawed and was in this process of of uh transformation.

Uh I mean, one of the most obvious accounts of that is a time that Jacob and his family, they were shepherd or uh, you know, they had herds and they were shepherds and they're grazing their flocks, and they travel through a town called Shechem, and a guy in the town takes Jacob's daughter Dinah, and he rapes her.

And Jacob's reaction is um a little saddening uh in that his main reaction is he doesn't want any trouble uh with the town.

Now, Dinah, now in this family, which is we'll see is very dysfunctional, dysfunctional as a family, um Dinah had a bunch of half-brothers but had two full um brothers.

And so Jacob is negotiating with the boy's dad who wanted to marry Dinah and trying to figure out how all this can happen.

And uh the two brothers, um, Simeon and Levi, decide to take it in their own hands.

And so they launched this seldom used military strategy um of circumcision, um specifically adult voluntary circumcision.

But they convinced the men in the town that they'll just settle there and they can all intermarry, but they can't do it unless they get circumcised.

And so they all circumcise themselves, and apparently adult voluntary circumcision um is a uh is a very painful thing.

And uh and it actually incapacitates you for a while, and so while they're incapacitated, these two brothers take swords and kill every single man in the town and seek justice for their sister um Dinah.

Uh the other brothers come along afterwards and kind of ransack um the town.

Jacob is angry.

Uh and he's angry not for the level of revenge, but he's angry because now he thinks people are gonna be out to get them, that this is gonna be uh a blot on their family.

Um the uh the younger brothers were even uh angrier.

Uh they said, Really, you're gonna let our sister be treated like a prostitute.

And I hesitate to tell a story that because there's other stories, but this is gonna come back into play even this morning as we set um some context.

But what we're gonna see with Jacob uh is someone that uh rejects conflict.

He he he goes the other way, he just wants things to to all get settled um by themselves.

And this is gonna be one of his um big flaws, and it's gonna put his family in in a terrible situation.

Um and so the the reason I hesitate to mention that is because so many women and some men have been affected by this exact same situation where you've uh you've been abused or you've been mistreated uh and someone has just ignored it because they didn't want the trouble that would go along with uh taking it head on.

And it it's just um it's a horrible situation when uh when that happens.

And and thankfully uh there was some justice um in this situation, although it was by the brothers.

But I don't want to really open up those wounds, even though those types of things are gonna be things that we're gonna talk about um as we see how God lifts us up out of whatever circumstances we've had, and the things that have happened to us, the mistreatments uh and unfairness.

Um even in thinking of our own family situation, when we look at this sadly dysfunctional uh family of Jacob's, um, the family we're born into does not determine our future.

You know, thankfully some are born into families with a lot of love and and and and there's some advantage to it, but it doesn't guarantee our future.

I mean, we still have choices to make and faith to to have and a relationship with God.

But more importantly, because this is the situation for most of us, is being born into a poor situation does not dictate our future.

Just the opposite.

One of the things our God, our daddy father, does the best is lift people out of circumstances, and and he'll do that for all of us.

But amidst all this uh mess, uh God still did a miracle.

And he did it uh with Rachel, the love of Jacob's life.

And now she was able to become pregnant.

And her son was born, and she gave him a Hebrew name that means Jehovah increase or may Jehovah increase.

And some people think that was a thank you for the son.

Others think that it was a request for another son.

It was probably a little bit of both.

Um, but that's the name in Hebrew and English.

The name, as you probably guessed, is Joseph.

And Rachel did have another son, Benjamin, and that delivery was very difficult, and and Rachel ended up dying uh during that birth.

And so Jacob poured out the love he had, really, the love he had for Rachel into these two sons.

And um, it might have looked like love to Jacob, but it just felt like extreme favoritism uh to his other ten sons.

And that sets up a situation that's ended up changing all their lives and is really the introduction to what amazing things God does with Joseph.

And so, like stories, you know, there's a reason the famous stories in the Bible are famous, and and uh and so most of us know the story of uh of Joseph.

But when we dig in a little bit, I think God's gonna really show us uh some insights uh on a lot of different things, how he speaks, how he blesses, some practical truths about how Joseph became successful in uh everything that he did.

And then also I think we'll be just a little inspired and um encouraged when we have uh difficult choices to make.

In Romans 15 it says, Such things were written in the Scriptures long ago to teach us, and the Scriptures give us hope and encouragement as we wait patiently for God's promises to be fulfilled.

That could have been written specifically about the story of Joseph's life.

And so when we think of Joseph, first thing I think of, first thing most people think of, is that is the coat of many uh colors.

In fact, that's the background uh we we picked uh this morning.

Um it's interesting, but that's that's really not the story.

That's just an interesting little part at the start of the story.

What's amazing about Joseph is the rest of his life.

But the story starts in Genesis 37.

So Jacob settled again in the land of Canaan where his father had lived as a foreigner.

This is the account of Jacob and his family.

When Joseph was 17 years old, he often tended his father's flocks.

He worked for his half-brother, the sons of his father's wives, Bilhah and Zilpa.

Um, and I want to stop there just quickly, because doesn't the polygamy in the Old Testament kind of freak us out or confuse us?

And and w why is it like that?

I think those are types of things, you know, Jacob avoided uh conflict, and those are the types of things that we may not want to talk about.

But it's really important to understand God.

Jesus, the Bible says, is the exact representation of God the Father.

And we look at things in the Old Testament, they're so confusing and confusing.

It was like, why would God want that?

Or why would God allow that?

And there's a big difference between God describing something and God prescribing something.

And even in the law, what God wanted from the start and is the same thing he desires now, and that's just a relationship with us, a life-giving relationship with us.

That was a tree of life.

What we get drawn towards is religion and rules.

And so we got the law.

And we think, or at least I thought, hopefully you don't, I thought, well, the law is God's perfect plan.

This is God's law, this is how he wants us to live.

But but the truth is, much of the law was an accommodation for jacked-up people.

I mean, even in the New Testament, they're asking Jesus about a certain law that was part of the law of Moses, and Jesus said, Oh, God only did that because of your hard hearts.

That's not what he wanted to do.

You know, and so there were things that happened and things that are allowed, but the whole purpose of the law was not to say, yeah, this is how God wants us to live.

Part of it was to keep them safe, part of them was to do different things.

All of it was to teach us that we can't live by a law, that we can only live by a relationship with the living God.

And so that was what makes the law perfect.

It's not all these uh weird things and weird rules, and so much of what happens in the Old Testament.

There's a lot of love and a lot of grace in the Old Testament.

So many things that are confusing in the Old Testament are not things God do, or God does.

It's things we blame God for.

You know, God in Genesis, you know, told uh husbands to leave your father and mother and cleave to your wife.

Not wives, wife.

You know, we look at Solomon and David, who had all these wives, and um, you know, it was expressly forbidden in the law.

In Deuteronomy expressly tells kings uh not to have many wives.

And so we get to the New Testament, and now we can really see God's plan, God's heart.

And, you know, away goes slavery, away goes chauvinism, away goes uh racism, away goes a lot of things, and we get back to where God wants us at the Tree of Life.

And so there was a penalty for polygamy in the Old Testament, and it was more of a natural consequence because you cannot look at a family in the Old Testament where there were more than one wife, that there wasn't tremendous strife and jealousy and um problems.

And so um it's good for us to remember God's real plan, and and he's not the big puppet master in the sky, he allows people freedom and we screw things up.

And so um here is an example of Laban tricking, uh uh.

That's my fault.

Please remember to turn your worst part's that's MM, but don't.

But don't tell anybody.

I better make sure that wasn't an important call, too.

The um Lisa, what was I talking about?

Us screwing things up and God God having a uh God having a perfect plan.

So there you go.

There's a good example.

Um and so Laban tricks uh Jacob.

Jacob does isn't gonna really confront him about it, and so now there's two wives, and then Rachel can't have children, and so they come up with their own plans, and now there's concubines, and now there's all this situation.

God didn't create any of that situation, he just has to keep dealing with um our mess ups.

Okay, we got circumcision and pygmy in in the same morning.

Um but Joseph reported to his father some of the bad things his brothers brothers were doing, and so this is kind of the start.

He sends Joseph out to check on the flocks, and what's he do?

He comes back and tells on his brothers.

You know, he could have talked to his brothers, you know, they probably were doing some pretty bad things because they were not that nice of guys.

But either way, he comes back and tells his dad.

Uh Jacob loved Joseph more than any of his other children because Joseph had been born to him in his old age.

So one day Jacob had a special gift made for Joseph, a beautiful robe.

But his brothers hated Joseph because their father loved him more than the rest of them.

They couldn't say a kind word to him.

And so that's a pretty succinct setup to the start of Joseph's um life.

You know, and we see the first hint of trouble where there's a problem going on, uh Jacob's not gonna confront it.

Um the real reason his brothers resented him was not that he had this beautiful jacket or beautiful robe.

In fact, the word for robe in the Hebrew here is uh is a robe that a royal person would wear.

Uh the typical word is uh tunic, and that's what people would wear to work, and these were working class people, and so that would be a short robe that was with short sleeves or sleeveless because you could work on it.

This would be a long robe all the way to the ground with long sleeves, and you could not work on it.

You could only supervise other people that were working uh in a beautiful um robe like that.

And you know what we see through the first part of Jacob's life and even Joseph's life, because this situation's gonna get worse.

You know, in fact, it just kind of got worse in front of us because.

Because he was, you know, telling on his brothers, and and now his dad gives him this beautiful robe, just him, and now they don't even want to talk to him.

They've got nothing um good to uh to say about him.

And I wanted just to talk briefly about the idea of seeing faith seeing problems grow in our families and not confronting them.

And I really can't judge Jacob too bad because that I did that um for years.

Part of that was how I'm wired by God, I think, you know, and and part of it is uh my family when I grew up.

In my family, there was no confrontation.

I mean, we valued peace.

I mean, literally, I can only think of maybe two or three times anybody got angry.

There's five kids, um, two parents, and it was just a I mean, it was a big deal.

We're not gonna raise our voices, we're not gonna get mad, and and that's the way the family was.

And I will say right now, none of the family's particularly close because there also wasn't, you know, a lot of intimacy in those types of things.

It was all about the surface stuff.

Hey, let's just keep everything under control.

And Susan was raised the exact opposite.

And so I I remember when we dated, like the second time I ever went over to her house, they're all screaming at each other, and I could not believe it.

It like totally freaked me out.

I'd never even seen people scream at each other, and um and so they erred on the side of aggressive communication, but which may be the place to err.

Um, but anyway, it kinda the way I was caused a ton of problems in our relationship because I I just would not confront a problem.

And so when Susan and I um would have an issue in in our relationship, I mean I would just be like, uh hope it would go away.

I didn't want to talk about it.

Can we talk about this now?

We'll talk about it tomorrow.

And um, or I'd be like, she'd be like, you're mad, aren't you?

And I'm like, no, I'm not mad, everything's fine.

Um, you know, and I just put up this wall, and it got worse and worse, and then about once a year I'd blow up in in some way.

Um but it just made our marriage worse.

It it it created problems with the um with the kids because I wasn't willing to just confront an issue you know straight on.

And so God's changed me a lot in that.

And uh and so now I will.

I mean if if something happens that hurts my feelings, I'll just say, hey, that kind of hurt my feelings.

And we talk about it and uh and we move on.

But uh you know where I really learned this was in business.

And I talked about this maybe once before, but worked for Dunham Bradstreet, got this, had an entrepreneurial seizure, and uh decided to start a company with one of our um customers.

And Susan didn't want me to do it because she didn't trust this guy, but I felt like I knew everything at the time.

And so um I did it, and the whole deal was I was gonna run the thing and and he was gonna finance the thing.

And um and so Susan's like, well, do you have that in riding?

Hey, have you verified what he's talking about?

Do you have any contracts?

I'm like, no, I don't want to start a business without trust, you know, and so um and so we had been moved out to California.

We moved out there uh corporate military style where they come get everything, even if your trash is full, they take it with you.

And and we uh moved back Beverly Hillbilly style uh with literally had a uh picnic table and a bike tied to the back of the U-Haul truck.

But anyway, we get back, we start this company, and I've never known a person like this, but this person actually was a pathological liar.

I mean, and and I mean it was bad, and yet still I was just kind of like trying to make it work out.

We'd moved out here, you know, and so when uh after a couple, two or three months, I confronted him, but it was like the wimpiest confrontation you ever saw, you know, and he explained how I just everything was okay and not to worry about it.

And uh and it got worse and worse and worse, and then finally, you know, where when there is no money, and and now there's a serious problem, um, it took him about three seconds to have a confrontation.

You know what I'm saying?

I mean, he was like all of a sudden it was me and it's attack mode, and it was a super hard situation for our family.

I mean, it was really a tough time for me.

Um I this is how unc unconfrontational I was, is I fasted for six days, uh asking God to make this work out with this business partner.

Like thankfully, he answered those prayers in a different way.

Um so that was a really hard thing for me, but it was the best, one of the best things that's ever happened to me, and and definitely a key to ever having any business business success after that.

Because when you see a problem, you gotta you gotta fix it and you gotta do it as quick as possible.

And it's worth some minor confrontations, you know, along the road.

And so I say that really um, I guess just to share that, but as parents, we cannot let our families get as out of whack as Jacob's family is gonna get because we just want peace, or we're hoping things will go away or get better or whatever.

Even in our marriage relationships, you know, let's take action.

You know, let's take initiative, let's let's live life on purpose and deal with what uh we need to deal with.

Um Jacob's ignoring the problem.

Joseph is about to make it worse.

Uh one night Joseph had a dream, and when he told his brothers about it, they hated him more than ever.

You know, dreams are one of the interesting ways God speaks to some of us.

And one of the things we're gonna get to talk about is how do we know when a dream is from God?

How do we know how to interpret a dream if it is from God?

Uh a few times in Joseph's life, God spoke to him in dreams, but he's young and he's brash and he's he's spoiled, probably immature, and he does the pretty unwise things.

He says, Listen to this dream.

This is to these brothers who can't stand him.

He's probably wearing his robe when he's talking to him.

He says, Listen, we're out in the field, tying up bundles of grain.

Suddenly my bundle stood up, and your bundles all gathered around and bowed low before mine.

So his brothers responded, So you think you'll be our king, do you?

Do you actually think you will reign over us?

And they hated him all the more because of his dreams and the way he talked about them.

Um he definitely made the situation worse.

And, you know, one thing that we all have to learn as God starts speaking to us and we start hearing his voice is what to do with some of the things uh he says.

Because a lot of times things God gives us is for us.

You know, it it it's it's not to go and tell everyone else.

In Proverbs 17, it says, a truly wise person uses few words.

Proverbs 10 says, Too much talk leads to sin.

Be sensible and keep your mouth shut.

And if Joseph had been sensible, that's exactly what he would have done.

But soon Joseph had another dream.

And again he told his brothers about it.

Listen, I've had another dream, he said.

The sun, moon, and eleven stars bowed low before me.

This time he told the dream to his father as well as to his brothers, but his father scolded him.

What kind of dream is that?

What kind of dream is that?

He asked.

Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow to the ground before you?

But while the brothers were jealous of Joseph, his father wondered what the dream meant.

Okay, so now even his dad's ticked at uh Joseph's level of uh of arrogance.

Um Joseph's brothers aren't that nice to begin with, and now things are get are getting to a breaking point.

But again, Jacob allows it to get to a breaking point.

And soon after this, Joseph's brothers went to pasture their father's flocks at Shechem.

When they had been gone for some time, Jacob said to Joseph, Your brothers are pasturing the sheep at Shechem, get ready, and I will send you to them.

Okay, this is a real brain cramp on Jacob's part, because Shechem, we just talked about it, is where these guys had just killed every man in the village.

And so he sends them there to uh to pasture their flocks.

And you know, after a while he doesn't hear from them, and he starts to wonder, uh-oh, maybe something's happened to uh to the boys.

And so he sends uh Joseph, uh, I'm ready to go, Joseph replied.

Go and see how your brothers and flocks are getting along, Jacob said, then come back and bring me a report.

So Jacob sent him on the way.

Um he meets a guide, he tells him not there, that they uh um are in Dothan, and so Joseph followed his brothers to Dothan and uh found them there.

Okay, what do you guess Joseph is wearing?

His robe.

He's wearing the robe.

And over the next few weeks, we're gonna see how God can transform this uh person into somebody who's really thankful and humble and um wise.

When Joseph's brother saw him coming, they recognized him in the distance.

As he approached, they made plans to kill him.

Here comes the dreamer, they said.

Come on, let's kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns.

We can tell our father a wild animal has eaten him.

Then we'll see what becomes of his dreams.

But when Reuben heard of their scheme, he came to Joseph's rescue.

Let's not kill him, he said.

Why should we shed any blood?

Let's just throw him into this empty cistern here in the wilderness.

Then he'll die without our laying a hand on him.

Reuben was secretly planning to rescue Joseph and return him to his father.

So when Joseph arrived, his brothers ripped off the beautiful robe he was wearing.

Then they grabbed him, threw him into the cistern.

Now the cistern was empty, there was no water in it.

So the first thing they do is rip that stinking robe right off of him.

You know, because it was a sign of love and affection to Joseph.

It was a sign of favoritism to the boys.

That's the most uh famous and perhaps least important part of uh Joseph's life.

You know, how he gets bruised, battered, and left for dead at the bottom of a well.

Now, I don't want to be like his brothers, but we're actually gonna leave him there for a week.

Just sitting there at the uh at the bottom of the well.

I don't want you to worry about him because uh Joseph's gonna get picked up.

He's gonna become a person of great humility and integrity and faith and wisdom.

He's gonna save the lives of his entire family, he's gonna save the lives of many nations.

He's also gonna become the second most powerful man in the whole world.

How that happens is a God story.

You know, if the worship team will come up, we're gonna finish here in just uh a couple of minutes.

You know, God led Suze and I to start his hands um a little over seven years ago, and he actually used a dream in a very big way to uh force us to do it.

And um sometime in the next few weeks I'll I'll I'll talk a little bit about that, about how that happened and what that meant to uh to us.

And a lot of things have surprised me since we're kind of all doing this together, and and probably the thing that surprised me the most is how much pain is in so many people's lives.

You know, I honestly I never really knew that.

You know, I'd go to church and get dressed up and everybody's smiling and and and seems to have it together, and I didn't understand that everyone has a God story that so many people have have lived through so much.

I've heard stories I didn't even know existed, and and and so many of them, and and so much faith and so much love and so much uh redemption in um in people's lives.

Uh right now Joseph was thrown into a well, and that alone could have killed him.

Uh most of his brothers wanted to leave him to die.

He had been set up by his dad, betrayed by his brothers.

He'd lived through the death of his his mom while he was young and and I'm sure loved her deeply.

And right now he's alone in the dark at the bottom of a well.

But he's not really alone, he's not really forgotten.

Because God loves him, and he has a plan and he has a purpose uh for his life.

And I don't know how many of us are here talking together this morning, maybe a thousand.

Um church math would make it at 2150, but um here's the point.

With this number, there are a bunch of us in a well this morning.

There just there just has to be.

You know, some of us think that we can't go on, that our lives are just broken uh beyond repair, that there's no way out of the well.

You know, there's a bunch of us that have been mistreated like Joseph, been mistreated horribly by our families, been sexually abused, been verbally abused, been physically abused, or just ignored, which is a horrible type of abuse.

There's some of us that feel trapped, like in a well, trapped you know, in our home, or trapped in our marriage, or trapped in an addiction, or trapped in a job, or just plain uh trapped, and we think there's no hope.

Now, some of us had a dream, like Joseph.

We we we had a dream uh once, but we've given up on it because it was so long ago and the circumstances seem uh so far away from it.

That is why God gave us Joseph to show us there's hope, to show us there's a future and how to get there.

God loves Joseph, God loves you, God's not mad at you, he's not giving up on you.

He has a great plan, he has a great future for each of us.

I promise, I promise that he does.

But we'll need to step into it, you know, like Joseph did, and and he'll show us how.

You know, the first thing to do if we've never done it is just get into relationship with God.

You know, the life-giving, loving God.

And it's uh or or for some of us, maybe get back into relationship.

You know, maybe we've kind of pulled apart and we and we need to get back.

But either way, it's so simple.

I mean, it would it's just with in our own words, in our own way.

You know, Jesus, I need you.

Jesus, help me.

Jesus, I want to follow you.

Jesus, I want you in my life, whatever it is.

And uh, he does the heavy lifting.

You know, we're creating God's image with the Spirit, the Spirit comes alive, connects with God's Spirit, and then he starts loving on us, changing us, transforming us.

From the inside out, eventually things on the outside um start to change as well.

You know, we've I think we're gonna talk about Joseph's story for the next six weeks or so, and I'm I really think it's gonna be a meaningful six weeks and looking forward to us talking about it uh together.

So let's stand and we'll sing one more song together.

Love you all.

Hope you have a great week.

God, we just praise you.

We thank you for uh all the love and loving things you do for us, like recording the story of Joseph, like seeing the pain in his life that maybe has opened some wounds as we think of our own, God.

But please heal those wounds and just uh give us uh the faith, give us the encouragement, help us to see that you've got so much more for us, and uh and that you're gonna do it, and that you're gonna show us through this great story uh how to be uh the the people, the men and women that you create us to be.

We love you and thank you in Jesus' name.

Amen.